The Communicated IO: Public Relations, Civil Society Inclusion and Global Politicization of International Organizations

• Applicant: Dr. Matthias Ecker-Ehrhardt
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: from 2013 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 236311339

Does an increase in the public communication of international organizations (IO) foster the politicization of their policies and procedures? IOs are publicly debated and contested--that is, politicized--to varying degrees. At the same time, they have opened for societal processes of communication, by virtue of intensified public relations activities as well as the inclusion of civil society organizations (CSO) into IO-internal deliberations, decisions and the implementation of IO-policies. In this context, it is widely held that such increases in the level of IO public accessibility fosters politicization because information about failures become more readily available to external actors. However, the opposite might be true as well: an IO might avoid or manipulate public contestation--by way of professionalizing their public relations or marginalizing critics by selectively including CSOs into own activities. Against this backdrop, the project asks about the impact of IO public relations and CSO-inclusion on politicization. It pursues an explanatory approach with a strong focus on what makes politicization a critical variable for democracy: the emergence of a lively and inclusive public sphere that allows civil society actors to hold IO authority accountable.The project, in its first part, entails the coding and multivariate analysis of public statements of about 50 IOs that can be found in the newsfeeds of two transnational news agencies during three ministerial conferences per IO between 2004 and 2012. The second part of project adds four in-depth case studies using press releases of IO and CSO. The selection of cases draws upon a 'most similar system design'. Both parts of the project allow for complementary conclusions on the causal effects of increasing levels of public accessibility on politicization. Both parts promise important insights about existing inequalities in global politicization--important evidence for an empirically grounded evaluation of institutional arrangements and communication strategies of IOs.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants